Halfway along Stroget, where the shopping crowds thin for a moment at Amagertorv, stands one of Copenhagen's oldest institutions. Helligaandskirken - the Church of the Holy Ghost - traces its story to 1296, when Bishop Johannes Krag of Roskilde founded a House of the Holy Ghost here as part of a settlement with the city's rebellious population: a refuge that cared for the sick, the poor and the old. In 1469 Christian I raised the hospital to an abbey, and Pope Sixtus IV confirmed it under the Order of the Holy Ghost in 1474, with Santo Spirito in Rome as its mother church. The Reformation dissolved the monastery in the 1530s and the church became a Lutheran parish church; the tower was resumed in 1582 under governor Christoffer Valkendorff and topped with a spire in 1594, attributed to Hans van Steenwinckel the Elder. The catastrophic city fire of 21 October 1728 gutted the building - the tower burned, vaults collapsed into the chancel - and the reconstructed church was reconsecrated on 30 November 1732. Major restoration in the late 1870s gave the exterior much of its present character, and the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard was christened here in 1813. Beside the church survives the Helligaandshuset, the medieval west wing of the old abbey and one of the very few surviving medieval buildings in central Copenhagen, now used for exhibitions, book markets and events. The church itself remains an active parish with regular services and concerts, and its plaza with the Storkespringvandet fountain nearby is one of the natural pause points on any walk down Stroget. The ground around the church carries as much history as the building: the old churchyards - southern toward Stroget, eastern along Niels Hemmingsens Gade, the herb garden Christian IV granted the church in 1607 to the north - served the parish until burials inside the walls were banned in 1858, and the street cut through after the 1728 fire (today's Valkendorfsgade) still traces the disaster's footprint. The church's name honours Niels Hemmingsen, the internationally famed theologian who preached here in the mid-1500s.

Type: Tourist Attraction

Address: Niels Hemmingsens Gade 5, Copenhagen, Denmark, 1153

Website: https://www.helligaandskirken.dk